The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2

by Sir Edward Tyas Cook

IV

When the Commission of the Army in India was nearing the end of its labours, an event happened which seemed to Miss Nightingale of crucial importance. On April 14, 1863, she heard from Sir Harry Verney that Sir George Lewis, the Secretary for War, had died suddenly on the previous day. Sir Harry added that at the Service Clubs, Lord de Grey was talked of as a probable successor, but that Lord Panmure's name was also mentioned. From another and a better-informed source she heard that Lord de Grey hoped to get the appointment, but that there were believed to be two difficulties in the way. The Queen might object to the War Office being given to a Minister who had not yet been in the Cabinet, and pressure might be put upon Lord Palmerston from other quarters not to appoint a Peer. Should either or both of these factors prevail, Mr. Cardwell was believed to be the most probable successor. Now it seemed to Miss Nightingale all-important that, when the Report on the health of the army in India came out, the Secretary of State for War should be a proved sanitarian. She did not want to have once more to “bully the Bison,” and she did not know much of Mr. Cardwell. She did know Lord de Grey, and she knew him as a sympathiser in her cause. Without a moment's delay she set herself to bring to bear in his favour such influence as she might possess, either on her own account or as the public legatee, as it were, of Sidney Herbert. A telegram written en clair and preserved by the recipient shows how a good press was secured for Lord de Grey's appointment:—

From Florence Nightingale to Harriet Martineau.—Agitate, agitate, for Lord de Grey to succeed Sir George Lewis.

The world was duly informed next day (April 17) through the columns of the Daily News that public opinion expected the appointment of Lord de Grey. But Miss Nightingale took other measures. She wrote a letter to Lord Palmerston, and to his principal colleague, Mr. Gladstone, she sent a copy of it. Mr. Gladstone, in reply, did not doubt that Lord Palmerston had a very high opinion of Lord de Grey, but added on his own part that he saw great difficulty in not having the head of the War Office, with its vast expenditure, in the House of Commons. The letter to Lord Palmerston, meanwhile, was delivered by a special messenger, who had been strictly charged to make sure that the Minister read it at once. The sequel, describing a somewhat curious scene, had better be given in Sir Harry Verney's own words:—

Cleveland Row, Ap. 15 [2.30]. From Hampstead I returned to South Street, and found your letter. Thence to Cambridge House. Lord Palmerston was so good as to admit me. I said that I had seen you this morning, and that by your desire I requested him to allow me to read a letter to him from you. He said, “Certainly”; and I read it to him rather slowly. Having read it, I said that you had mentioned this morning that within a fortnight of Lord Herbert's death, he had said to you more than once that he hoped Lord de Grey might be his successor. I then added, “I have not to request any reply or observations on Miss Nightingale's letter. I have only to thank you for your kindness in allowing me to read it.” He took the[31] letter and put it in his pocket. He then asked how you are, and where, and I told him. There is a Cabinet at 5.30 this afternoon. I think that if Gladstone has your note before going to it, it might be well.

She had anticipated Sir Harry's suggestion, as we have seen. The Prime Minister put her letter into his pocket, but it did not stay there. He took it with him to Windsor and read it to the Queen. On April 22 it was announced that Her Majesty had been pleased to approve the appointment of Lord de Grey as Secretary of State for War.

V

Miss Nightingale thus felt assured that when the Indian Report came out she would have a sympathetic chief at the War Office, and she turned with the greater zest to the next stage in her labours; namely, the preparation of the Report by the Commissioners. The manuscript of the first page or two (explaining the delay in issuing the Report and the procedure of the Commission) is in Lord Stanley's handwriting (preserved among Miss Nightingale's papers). He entrusted the preparation of the first draft of the rest of the Report, for statistics to Dr. Farr, and for the rest to Miss Nightingale and Dr. Sutherland. She had written a first draft of the greater part of her sections of the Report as early as April 1862. By August it was in type and corrected by Lord Stanley, who “pledged himself to carry it through the Commission next month.”[17] But Dr. Farr's section was not so far advanced, and there were other delays at which Miss Nightingale chafed not a little. In May 1863 the last stage was reached. “I have done and shall do all in my power,” Lord Stanley wrote to her (July 10), “to make it public that to Dr. Sutherland and you we mainly owe it that the Report has assumed its present shape.” Among her papers is a collection of proofs of the Report in various stages; some corrected by Dr. Farr and Dr. Sutherland, others corrected and re-corrected by her. The descriptive portion of the Report is in substance a repetition of her “Observations,” in the colder language which is held to add weight and dignity to such documents; though here and there Miss Nightingale's touch may be felt. The magnitude of the evils which needed to be remedied is put in an arresting way. “Besides deaths from natural causes [9 per 1000], 60 head per 1000 of our troops perish annually in India. It is at that expense that we have held dominion there for a century; a company out of every regiment has been sacrificed every twenty months. These companies fade away in the prime of life; leave few children; and have to be replaced, at great cost, by successive shiploads of recruits.” The cost of preventable sickness in the Indian army was calculated at £388,000 a year. The list of Recommendations with which the Report concludes may be described as a Sanitary Charter for the Army in India—a Charter which during many successive years was gradually put into force.

Last of all came what Miss Nightingale considered the most vital point of all—namely, the suggestion of practical machinery by which, if the Government adopted it, the recommendations of the Commission might be carried out. At this crucial point, she had a very stiff fight. The machinery, as she had devised it, was to be twofold. First, there were to be Sanitary Commissions appointed for each Presidency in India. On this point, all the Commissioners seem to have been agreed; but it was different with Miss Nightingale's second point. The reports which she had read and marked from the Indian stations filled her with a fear that if the whole of the initiative were left to India the work would in some cases be negligently or unintelligently done. There had not yet been in that country the same education of public opinion amongst the governing class in the science of sanitation that had been in progress in England. She deemed it essential that the machinery recommended by the Commission should in one way or another include provision to secure for India the experience already obtained in dealing with all kinds of sanitary questions in England. She had formulated her own plans to this end at an early stage of the Commission. What she first suggested was a Sanitary Department at the India Office, and this, as we shall hear in a later chapter (p. [153]), was ultimately established. It had been well if the suggestion had been accepted from the beginning, for the compromise which was substituted led to some confused friction between the War Office and the India Office. As the second-best plan, Miss Nightingale wanted the standing Sanitary Committee at the War Office,[18] reinforced by one or two representatives of India, to be invested with authority over Indian sanitation, and she wanted, secondly, a Sanitary Code to be issued for India by the Home Government. She had named the two Indian officials, and had urged the addition of Mr. Rawlinson, at that time the leading sanitary engineer in England.[19] But on all this there was some difference of opinion. She was kept informed from day to day of the currents of thought among the Commissioners, and of the course of the discussions. The letters, minutes, memoranda in which she urged her views are many. She had first to persuade Lord Stanley, and this in personal interviews she succeeded in doing. She begged him to open the subject to Sir Charles Wood, the Secretary for India, who did not take the suggestion amiss. There were still, however, some contrary opinions, but ultimately her policy prevailed. “I cannot help telling you, in the joy of my heart,” she wrote to Harriet Martineau (May 19), “that the final meeting of the Indian Sanitary Commission was held to-day—that the Report was signed—and that after a very tough battle, lasting three days, to convince these people that a Report was not self-executive, our Working Commission was carried, not quite in the original form proposed, but in what may prove a better working form because grafted on what exists. This is the dawn of a new day for India in sanitary things, not only as regards our Army, but as regards the native population.” But Miss Nightingale was never content to let the light steal in gradually; she wanted to secure for the Report of the Commission the fullest possible glare of publicity.

Her first concern was to get early notices of the Report in the newspapers. The daring, the celerity, the energy of her moves might excite the admiration even of the greatest experts in this sort of our own day. The gist of the Report, so far as its statement of the facts was concerned, was contained in her own “Observations”; and, as explained above, she had already circulated these both in India and at home. Having thus, as it were, salted the ground, she prepared for the official publication. As one of the principal authors of the Report, she was obviously entitled to some copies. She obtained a note from Lord Stanley, the Chairman, to that effect. The Queen's printer, Mr. Spottiswoode, was her very good friend, having been associated with her in more than one philanthropic enterprise, and, after seeing Lord Stanley's note, he promised to use every expedition and to let Miss Nightingale have some of the very earliest copies. She sent them off immediately; to various influential friends (Sir John Lawrence among the number), but principally to writers for the press; and with regard to these latter, there was no reason why she should tell each recipient of the special early copy that he was not the only individual so favoured. A Blue-book of 2028 pages is not mastered in a minute, and people wondered how so many of the newspapers and magazines were able to notice the Report so fully on the instant. “Mr. Baker [the Clerk to the Commission] has regained his equanimity,” wrote the printer (July 23); “but for three days he could not recover the shock of your rapid action.” Miss Nightingale's celerity may well have seemed indecent to the leisurely official mind; for six months were allowed to pass before the Government of India was officially provided with copies of the Report! This delay may seem incredible to those not well versed in such affairs, but it is recorded in a Government Dispatch,[20] and an investigation made by Miss Nightingale into another delay of a like kind may perhaps afford an explanation.[21] Meanwhile, in July 1863, she had, for some days previous to the issue of the Report, been arranging for reviews in newspapers and magazines, in Edinburgh and Dublin as well as in London. Mr. W. R. Greg was especially helpful; he contributed notices to three important periodicals—the Economist, the National Review, and the Spectator. Miss Nightingale was diligent also in coaching Harriet Martineau, writing at great length to explain the points on which public opinion might most usefully declare itself. Miss Martineau wrote on the Report in the Daily News, Macmillan's Magazine, and Once a Week; and on her own part she had a contribution to make to the cause. She was an old friend of Lord and Lady Elgin. Should she write to them? The indefatigable Miss Nightingale at once sent her the heads of a letter on the subject which should go immediately to the Viceroy.